Lyric Gillett, founder of Faces of Choice, a group which highlights the stories of abortion survivors, is expressing frustration after Fox delayed acceptance of a Super Bowl ad until it was too late to run.
“In an era where we’re trying to give survivors a voice, whether that is through the #MeToo movement or on any number of issues, for some reason we deem survivors of abortion worthy of being ignored into oblivion,” said Gillett, reported the Washington Times. “That, to me, is both ironic but also just appalling.”
According to NBC News, among the ads to be shown during the Super Bowl on Sunday is one featuring RuPaul’s Drag Race drag queens, who call themselves Kim Chi and Miz Cracker. They will appear in a Sabra hummus commercial and become the first drag queens in a Super Bowl ad.
However, Gillett said Fox continued to give her some hope of airing the powerful black-and-white, pro-life ad beginning in July.
According to the Times, a Fox spokesperson said in a statement, “Super Bowl LIV sold out at a record pace this year, and unfortunately we were unable to accommodate Faces of Choice and other advertisers.”
But, Gillett said the network accepted her storyboards and asked questions about her organization at the same time its sales division said the legal department would let her know its decision by late November.
“Some individuals had apparently expressed that the sales division was not happy with the way the legal division was going in terms of not providing answers,” she said. “So, an executive flew up from New York and we were told Friday to expect an answer by Monday. Monday came along, we got no answer, and then found out that night that they were sold out.”
The Faces of Choice ad was played at the national March for Life rally in Washington, DC, Friday. The organization’s website states its purpose is to highlight abortion survivors who have “gone largely unnoticed.”
“I am convinced that the key to changing the cultural conversation about abortion is within the voices of the survivors,” Gillett says in her message on the website, referring to abortion as the “Silent Holocaust.”
“We often seek to separate the humanity from things that make us uneasy, but when a victim – a survivor – stares you in the eye and tells you their story, a paradigm shift takes place that cannot be conveniently forgotten, and which has the power to change everything,” she explains.
Gillett said there are “thousands” of abortion survivors in the United States alone.